Fifteen Ways to Help Occupy Wall Street

Fifteen Ways to Help Occupy Wall Street

October 25, 2011

Ready to fight back?

Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.

You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue.

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

Support Progressive Journalism

The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.

Fight Back!

Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.

You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue.

Travel With The Nation

Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.

Sign up for our Wine Club today.

Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?

More than six weeks into the occupation of Zuccotti Park by a ragtag band of a few hundred anti-corporate activists, Occupy Wall Street has quickly grown into an international movement and potent symbol of popular outrage over the widening gaps between rich and poor and the way that government has been hijacked to transfer wealth upwards to the one percent.

The movement’s message has also gone surprisingly mainstream, as my colleague Katha Pollitt detailed in her latest Nationcolumn explaining the OWS’s appeal and why unlikely suspects like Deepak Chopra and Suze Orman have jumped on the Occupy Wall Street wagon.

After the first week of protests, I wrote a brief guide featuring some tips on how to help the then-burgeoning movement. Now, I’ve updated that primer with new suggestions and specific tips for supporting some of the many regional Occupy actions that have recently been established.

3. Have pizza delivered to the protestors at Liberty Plaza. Call Majestic Pizza Corp at 212-349-4046 and have your credit card ready.

4. Tell the nation’s mayors to respect the people’s right to free assembly. The eviction of the Liberty Square occupation was averted by massive public protest from those in the square and beyond. When you learn that an occupation is threatened, please use this list, courtesy of activist Cryn Johannsen, to find the relevant mayor’s phone number and ask him or her to let the protestors protest.

5. Circulate word of Occupy College’s national series of Teach-ins on November 2nd and 3rd. More than 100 schools have signed on to date.

11. Defend Occupy Denver, which was also forcibly rousted from its encampment with hundreds of protestors arrested. Sign your name to this petition to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper politely demanding that he reopen Lincoln Park for the demonstration, and stop arresting non-violent protesters.